Collections record Beta

Collection Record Detail

Object Name

Portrait Miniature - Julius Deming (1755-1838)

Object Number

1939-03-6

Description

Watercolor miniature on ivory of Julius Deming (1755-1838) Bust portrait of older man wearing black coat, white stock. Greying hair, brown eyes. Facing front right. Blue/beige background. Plain red leather album case with 2 hooks. White silk lining, velvet binder.

Comment

SITTER: Julius Deming (1755-1838) was born in Lyme, CT. In 1781 he set up a mercantile business in Litchfield. In 1800 he joined Benjamin Tallmadge and Oliver Wolcott, Jr. in establishing the Litchfield China Trading Co., which imported goods directly from China to Litchfield. The business was dissolved in 1814. Deming figured prominently in the "Selleck Osborn Affair" Deming was a staunch Federalist in a Federalist town, but when Selleck Osborn and Timothy Ashley came to town and established the Democratic newspaper, The Witness, eventually there was trouble and Deming filed a libel lawsuit against Osborn. Osborn went to jail rather than pay a fine, and became a martyr for the Democratic cause. ARTIST: Born in Milton, a village in the town of Litchfield, Anson Dickinson began advertising himself as a miniature painter in 1802. He traveled to New York in 1804, where he was painted by Edward Greene Malbone, the leading American miniaturist of his day. Dickinson painted over 1,500 miniatures over the course of fifty years, traveling as far as Canada and South Carolina to paint. He kept a studio in New York for a period, and returned frequently to Litchfield where he painted prominent residents and students of the Female Academy and Law School.